Frank took a step forward, no way in hell that he was letting a tree full of children scare him away, and heard hissing snaps as the kids began pumping the BB guns, priming them to fire.

A low growl prickled the hairs on the back of Frank’s neck. He faltered, stopped as a dog wriggled slowly out from under the porch and padded silently through the junk, stopping just short of the pavement.

At first, he thought it was a pit bull, but the dog was larger than any pit bull he’d ever seen. It had the wide head knotted with clumps of muscles so large around the jaws that it looked like it had the mumps. The short bluish hair was shot through with flecks of gray. The teats hung loose and low. One eye was gone, leaving just jagged folds of scar tissue. She looked like she’d happily chew on the rusted engine blocks all day and fire sharpened nails out of her butt.

Frank found out later the dog’s name was Petunia.

Petunia fixed her good eye on him and growled again.

With a sinking, numbing certainty, Frank realized that his gift with animals, his ability to somehow calm them, even talk with them, wasn’t going to work with this particular dog. He jammed both hands back in his pockets and clenched his fists and weighed his options. He could either keep walking forward to the dead tree, which meant almost certainly facing the dog, not to mention the onslaught of slingshots and BB guns, or he could back away and pretend nothing had happened.

The gas pump stopped clicking.

Frank didn’t like it much, but he backed across the street.

The girl laughed. “You fuckin’ pussy.”

Frank suddenly wished he had one of the quiet gentlemen’s guns, just one, so he could shoot a couple of the boys out of the tree like goddamn pigeons. He just wanted to pay for the gas and get the hell out of here. As soon as he reached the car, they fired. Rocks, marbles, BBs, and grapes struck the car and the pavement in sudden, crackling, popping sounds, like Drano poured into Rice Krispies. Frank didn’t turn around, refused to even look back across the street. He replaced the gas nozzle and went into the small convenience store.

* * * * *

It was a little cooler inside, but that was like saying that stepping into a Port-A-Potty would get you out of the sun. The place wasn’t a whole lot bigger than a Port-A-Potty either, with two aisles filled mostly with junk food. A plump, middle-aged woman leaned over the counter. “Those kids giving you a hard time?” she asked eagerly under bangs so red they hurt Frank’s eyes. Her hair looked stiff, brittle, as if it would shatter if he looked at it crooked.

He shrugged, shook his head. “Nah. They’re just…kids.” He flattened a twenty on the counter.

“Bunch of savages if you ask me. They’re downright vicious, I’m telling you. Believe you me, I know what I’m talking about. Sit here all day, every day; I could tell you plenty. They didn’t hurt your car, did they?”

Frank shook his head again, hoping that she would just take the money and give him his change. But the woman ignored the money and glanced back out the grimy front window. “Half of ’em aren’t even related.” She flashed him a look with raised eyebrows, lips drawn tight, nodding. “Them two women, couple of…” She dropped her voice, as if someone could hear her outside. “Lesbians. Them two women,” in case Frank wasn’t sure who she was talking about. “Don’t know how many times they been married, see? Just up and decided one day they liked women.” She shook her head again, looking as if she’d just chewed up and swallowed a bug and couldn’t decide if she liked the taste or not. “This was after they had all them kids. All different fathers, of course. So when they got together, it’s all one big happy family. Kinda’ like the Brady Bunch.” She giggled, startled at her own wit, and raised a hand to her mouth, then finally took the twenty.

“Yeah,” Frank said.

“All them boys, they’re a bunch of holy terrors. Sometimes,” she said in a confidential whisper, twenty clutched tight in fingers that tapered off into inch long purple nails, “things get kinda slow around here, I’ll just call the cops on ’em, just to see what happens. But I try not to do it too much, you know?” She jabbed one of the purple nails at the cash register. “It’s better when I got a legitimate reason. Like just now.” The drawer sprang open with a tired ding and the purple nails scratched at the change.

“I’m sorry?”

“The deputies. Olaf and Herschell. They don’t take any crap from that family, I’m telling you.”

“You…already called the cops?”

“Of course. I watched those kids give you a hard time out there and thought…” She looked up into Frank’s face and didn’t like his attitude. “I thought…I thought that that’s what you would want. Decent people appreciate it when you try to help ’em out.” She slammed the change on the counter. “You sure weren’t gonna stop ’em, make ’em pay for what they did by yourself.” The woman drew back. “No sir. Didn’t take you long to come runnin’ in here.”

Frank didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to look at the woman. He scooped the change off the counter and was outside before she finished. “Thought I was doing you a favor,” she called.

* * * * *

He had just reached the long black car when the police cruiser suddenly appeared on the highway and his stomach rolled and flopped. He forced himself to move in slow motion as the cruiser slid to a stop in front of the satellite. He realized the cops had been there plenty of times, parking in the same spot every time, because the giant satellite protected the car from the slingshots and BB guns in the dead tree. Still moving nice and easy, he nodded at the cops, and opened the driver’s door.

But just as Frank was about to slip into the long black car, one of the deputies held up a finger, wordlessly telling Frank to sit still, to just wait a minute. The deputy had a flat, squashed face pinched in the center by a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. He pinned Frank with an eyeless stare and parked his hands on his hips. Frank nodded back, polite, just a regular citizen. Still, he settled himself into the driver’s seat and slipped the key into the ignition.

The other deputy, a short young guy with a crew cut so severe he was damn near bald, fastened his round hat over his skull. The deputies ambled out past the safety of the satellite dish, all casual and patient. They tilted their heads and quietly regarded the children for several moments.

Hot, stinging sweat trickled down the back of Frank’s neck.

The older deputy, the one with the face that looked like he’d kept his face mashed against a brick wall for thirty years or so, finally called out to the tree. “Thought we made it real clear last time. Thought it was understood that you and us were gonna have some serious problems if we had to come back over here.”

The girl’s voice shouted back, “We didn’t do nothin’!”

The deputy nodded. “Is that right? Then why are we here then?”

Nobody answered. The deputy asked, “Your mom around? Either one of ’em? No? They out at the auction yard? Heard one of your brothers was fightin’ this time.”

“Ernie. And he’s gonna kick aaaasssss,” the same girl called out.

The deputy chuckled. “Yeah. He oughta, that’s for sure, that’s right. But still, that don't have nothin’ to do with what we got going on here.”

The younger deputy slowly made his way over to Frank. He touched the edge of the round brim. “Howdy.” A brass bar identified him as “DPTY HALFORD.”

Frank nodded back. “Hi.” He grinned, easy, smooth, and loose.

“They give you a hard time?” Halford tilted his head at the dead tree.

“No, not really,” Frank said.

Halford’s gaze slid back to the pockmark in the glass. “Looks like they cracked your window some.”

Frank felt his crooked grin slipping off his face like the pair of oversize black shoes. “Aw hell, I think that might of already been there. I think the lady inside was just trying to look out for me.”